only came into use in 1520 . . . in a space now occupied by the Senior Common room. . . . In 1656 Brasenose began to build a new
chapel; in 1657-8 a new library and cloister. Here, in effect, was a
new quadrangle, worthy of any of the smaller colleges of Oxford. Crucially,
it was an enterprise that brought together both sides in the civil war.
Collegiate loyalty came to count for more than the memory of political
animosities. It was Radcliffe who had begun to work towards this goal,
from the very start of his Principalship in i614. It was under Greenwood
that the first stone of the chapel was laid on 18 June 1656. It was Yate who
presided over consecration on 17 November 1666. Both sides in the war
contributed to the building fund. Radcliffe's benefaction, as we shall see, was
princely. Those of Yate and Greenwood were smaller, but symbolically
significant. John Cartwright (parliamentarian) gave £120: his arms still
decorate the organ screen. Thomas Church (royalist) gave £300, as well as a
silver alms dish. Both sides in the recent
troubles must have recognized that the college had come very close to
collapse. Radcliffe, Greenwood, and Yate: parliamentarian, Presbyterian,
royalist; loyalty to Brasenose proved in the end more powerful than the
competing interests of all three. [19, 74]

In 1666 Simon White (who was paid 22 d a day) received 52 £ 10 s 0 d for laying the floor of the chapel and antechapel with black and white marble (77-78).

The Chapel Entrance

Left: Two views of the passage leading to the chapel. Right: An old monument or momento mori with cherubs blowing horns and skulls.

Left: A view from the chancel of the entrance and organ loft. Right: The entrance and organ loft seen from the choir stalls.

Brasenose secured right to dismantle and renove the interior of the old chapel of St. Mary's College (“later the site of Frewin hall”),
and the materials salvaged from St, Mary's “dictated the form of the new building. Second-hand windows, second-hand roofing:” John Jackson, the master mason and architect, in charge of the construction “had to cut his conception according to his cloth. At the same time, no architectural statement in Oxford could afford to ignore the current visual conventions: . . . the survival of Gothic and the importation of Baroque. Hence the style—the perplexing, intriguingly hybrid style—of Brasenose College chapel. . . . The early sixteenth-century hammer-beamed
roof, imported from old St Mary's, has been ingeniously disguised by a
hanging fan vault of wood and plaster. [Crook 79]

In 1845 Philip Hardwick replaced the “decayed tracery of the Easy window.” (79n). Kempe and Mills did the decorative marble flooring and wall colouring in 1901, and Kempe did much of the stained glass and painting in 1894-96 and 1901.